Oxfam has urged ministers to appoint an official poverty tsar who would champion efforts to combat low wages, poor life expectancy and endemic deprivation in some of Scotland's poorest neighbourhoods.

The charity has accused ministers in successive Scottish and UK governments of failing to combat poverty effectively by putting wealth-creation, consumption and economic growth ahead of social equality. That had led to an even deeper gulf between the richest and the poorest, it said.

In a report, Our Economy: towards a new prosperity, Oxfam urged both governments to put far greater energy into tackling poverty and social exclusion. There should be a new duty on ministers to ensure all their spending and regeneration strategies made economic equality a priority, it said.

That should include paying a living wage to all workers, supporting workers co-operatives, increasing pay for people whose jobs had high social value, such as childcare workers, clamping down on tax evasion and refusing state aid for companies that overpaid their executives but underpaid their staff.

The charity said these policies should be overseen by a new poverty commissioner to champion disadvantaged areas, pursue socially just policies and hold ministers to account.

The job would "ensure spending decisions are poverty-proofed and support communities to challenge government policies and private sector actions that do not contribute to socio-economic equality."

Nicola Sturgeon, the deputy first minister of Scotland, said she would consider that role and Oxfam's other proposals as she developed her government's case for independence.

"Scotland is a wealthy country, but the reality is that the Westminster system has utterly failed to address the deep social inequalities which exist in Scottish society. Indeed, under successive Westminster governments those inequalities have been allowed to widen," Sturgeon said. "Tackling and reversing that picture of inequality requires political will – but more fundamentally for Scotland it needs the key economic and social policy levers to be in the hands of the Scottish parliament."

However, Oxfam's report said Alex Salmond's Scottish government had also failed to tackle wealth inequality effectively and was guilty of poor policymaking. It said his government's stress on creating "a more dynamic and faster growing economy" as the main solution to poverty was misguided and "false".

It said Scotland is one of the most unequal society's in the west, with the wealthiest households 273 times richer than the poorest. In 2012, Scotland's 100 richest people saw their fortunes grow by £3bn to £21bn.

By comparison, in West Dunbartonshire, there were 40 people chasing every new vacancy while the number of people in jobs who suffered poverty had grown from 255,000 to 280,000 since 2008.

The current approach, the report stated, "ignores the failure of decades of economic growth to change the lives of too many Scots who still face premature mortality, economic inactivity, mental and physical ill-health and poor educational attainment". These policies "have largely been ineffective in reducing deprivation", it concluded.

Oxfam's report also criticised Glasgow city council for putting heavy emphasis on shopping and recreation as part of its regeneration strategy.

Despite having some of the worst health and life expectancy rates in the developed world, with men dying in some areas at 62-years-old on average, the city has transformed itself into the UK's second-largest shopping destination, with £2.5bn spent in its shops.

Despite having very similar deprivation levels to Manchester and Liverpool, Glasgow suffered very significantly worse health outcomes, a feature known as the "Glasgow effect".

In the poorest areas, premature male mortality was 30% higher than in those cities and there were 225% more alcohol-related deaths overall. By contrast, in the wealthy neighbourhood of Jordanhill, Glaswegian men would live to an average age of 76.

Judith Robertson, the head of Oxfam Scotland, said: "This is a structural problem caused by the economy. If we are serious about tackling these issues, then our politicians and policymakers need to make a fundamental change.

"Without that change, poverty and inequality will continue to shame us and drag all of us down for generations to come."

The report's findings and call for a poverty commissioner were supported by Peter Kelly, director of the Poverty Alliance Scotland. "The priorities that we set as a country, and by that I mean the UK and in many respects Scotland, are not on how we create a more socially just or more equal society," he said.

"The idea you can somehow address the levels of poverty we have in the UK and still allow all the things that drive up economic inequality to go unchecked just isn't possible."